Howloween Hunt (A Holiday Shifter Romance) (Holiday Shifters Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Vincent

  Sadie

  Also by Evelyn Vox

  About the Author

  Howloween Hunt

  A Holiday Shifter Romance

  Evelyn Vox

  Cover Design by Rocking Book Covers

  Copyright © 2017 by Evelyn Vox

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  1. Vincent

  2. Sadie

  3. Vincent

  4. Sadie

  5. Vincent

  6. Sadie

  7. Vincent

  8. Sadie

  9. Vincent

  10. Sadie

  11. Vincent

  12. Sadie

  13. Vincent

  14. Sadie

  15. Vincent

  16. Sadie

  17. Sadie

  18. Vincent

  19. Vincent

  Also by Evelyn Vox

  About the Author

  1

  Vincent

  The wolves in my pack never knew when the Full Moon would throw us into heat. At least, that’s how it was back when I had a pack. From what we could tell, each season’s Moon brought on at least one heat, but we never knew which Moon it would be.

  I’d been kicked out of my pack for a few months now. The first Moon of the summer season had many of my pack scenting the air and finding their intended mates. That was how it worked for us—we could only scent and sense our mates during the heated Moon. I watched as the frenzy of their heat overtook them and mine passed me over.

  For some, it was easy to find their beloved, their soul-mated equal in this life. Many a Moon had I seen my friends look at each other in a new light, lucky enough to have grown up with their mate. For others, it was a person they scented from afar, the heat giving them the strength and stamina they needed to hunt them down. And still, for many more, their mates remained hidden from them for decades.

  Having reached my twenty-seventh year, I feared I was one of those sorry bastards who was doomed to wander the Earth until I found her. My mate. I could feel my blood calling to her, begging her to reveal herself to me. I felt incomplete without her. No wolf knew what true happiness was until they’d found their mate.

  Traditionally, the mating heat took hold when a wolf was in the safety of a pack. Single-minded and horny as hell, wolves in heat were vulnerable and easy to attack, but they came to no harm when they had a pack’s protection. Now that I was alone, I had no idea if I would ever go into a mating heat. My chances of finding my mate seemed slimmer every day. The autumn leaves crunched under my padded paws as I smelled the air of the forest. I scented decay, blood from a predator making a kill, and humans.

  A town couldn’t be far.

  From what I could tell, I was in a remote place. Maybe Montana or Wyoming. It didn’t matter, so long as it was far from California. I’d left everything I knew in that place, and my wolf whined at the sting of the memory. I wished to be back in my family home, back with my pack mates, but there could be only one Alpha. That was a battle I lost.

  My best friend Dean had taken that crown. Alpha blood ran through both of our veins, and when the old Alpha died this summer, we each felt the pull of our heritage. We’d fought, a brutal, bloody battle. I’d come close to winning, but I’d been cocky, thinking that my bigger body was all I needed to win. I was a fool. To make matters worse, Dean had added insult to injury by refusing to kill me.

  It was unheard of for an Alpha to let a challenger leave the battle with his life. Most wolves would prefer death to exile.

  I fought the urge to put my tail between my legs as the fight replayed in my mind. Teeth, snarling, and blood—so much blood. Dean would have a gruesome scar on his face for life. When it came to Alpha battles, our blood didn’t heal us as it normally did. No, an Alpha wore his scars with pride. And I’d given Dean quite the trophy, slashed right across his pretty boy face. My wolf growled in satisfaction to know I’d marked him. A part of me would always stay with that pack so long as he lived.

  Wolves were not meant to be alone. There were always stories. Tales, meant to frighten young pups into behaving, about the lone wolves who roamed the forests, doomed to live a broken, half-life forever. Without a pack a wolf was doomed, fated to die alone and helpless. I would never to find my mate without the protection of a pack to lure me into the heat.

  At least, that’s what I’d been told.

  But as the October Full Moon began to rise, I smelled something else as I scented the air. The smell that sent my blood aflame and my cock raging. My wolf surged forward, dominant, overpowering the man in me, as it smelled her. A primal, ancient instinct drove us as I felt a manic need surge through my body. I felt stronger, faster, as I raced towards her scent. Stamina that I shouldn’t have, being lean from weeks in the wild, propelled my paws forward. My heart thundered and my wolf howled at the Moon.

  I’d found her, at last. My heart, my soul; my mate. I’d hunt her down, whether she was ready or not.

  There was no denying a wolf in heat.

  2

  Sadie

  “Here’s another Frankenstein,” Mandy said, handing the sticky window decoration to me.

  “Frankenstein’s Monster,” I corrected as I took his green head from her and plastered it on the window.

  “What?”

  “This is Frankenstein’s Monster,” I said, calmly, given that I’d definitely explained this to her before. “Dr. Frankenstein created him. The doctor is Frankenstein. This is his monster: Frankenstein’s Monster.”

  “Whatever,” she popped her bubble gum in my face and walked back to the register.

  I swallowed my retort as I finished decorating. No one ever understood. Maybe I would be better off biting my tongue instead of correcting people when they made such egregious mistakes. I couldn’t help it, though, I loved horror stories. The classic monster movies were near and dear to my heart. I was the only one in this small town who cared about the difference between Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s Monster.

  I huffed, stepping down from the stool and filled my fists with cobwebs. I strung them over the top of the display window. This small town, Spring Brook, was the only place I’d ever lived. It was a one-horse town in Wyoming and it was suffocating. Seriously, there was only one horse here—his name was Wilbur, and he belonged to Old Man Jameson.

  I couldn’t make this stuff up. This was my life.

  At twenty-one, I was ready to get out of here. I was different from the other people in my town. I liked scary, morbid things. People looked at my dark hair, black clothes, and spiky accessories, and assumed I was depressed. I’d wanted to scream at them: just because I’m a goth, doesn’t mean I want to slit my wrists!

  I couldn’t help that I appreciated the darker things in life. To make matters worse, people only began noticing my obsession with all things creepy after my parents died in a car crash three years ago. Everyone thought I was rushing to meet them on the other side. I wasn’t. I just saw beauty where others didn’t.

  I’d always been that way. My parents’ death was just a coincidence. Why shy away from the things that went bump in the night when they could be embraced? It wasn’t my fault I’d always felt like a stranger in my own skin, like there was something wild and scary underneath just waiting to be unleashed. Creatures of the ni
ght weren’t so terrifying when you felt like one yourself.

  Still, no one enjoyed feeling like an outsider. I wished people could see my fashion, my love for the macabre, and not be scared. But, no, I’d learned long ago that was nothing more than a fantasy. I was saving my money to move to Portland, Oregon, where I knew I’d find other “freaks” like me. Because that’s who I was in Spring Brook, the town freak, and no one wanted to befriend the town freak. Guys sure as hell didn’t want to date her, either. That was why I was a twenty-one year old virgin.

  I eyed the obnoxious diamond ring on Mandy’s left hand. She and Blake had gotten engaged a few weeks ago, and I’d found her happiness to be insufferable. It didn’t help that she loved to shove it in my face.

  “You better clean up your act, Sadie,” she’d said to me the night she strutted into the bar with that rock, “if you want to get a good guy like Blake. Otherwise, you’ll be a dried up old spinster in no time.”

  She’d walked into the inventory room and I’d flipped her off when the door closed. I hadn’t said anything about my suspicions that she was only after Blake for his money. His dad, Jeff, owned Smith’s—the bar where we both worked, and Blake was set to inherit the business. Did I mention this was also a one bar town? The Smith family did well for themselves, plying Spring Brook with alcohol.

  Tonight, we were having a big Halloween party at Smith’s. If I’d had it my way, we would have put blood splatters on the walls and played Dawn of the Dead in the back room. Needless to say, I’d been overruled. Instead, we had gummy Frankenstein’s Monsters, cobwebs with plastic spiders, and my favorite horror classic: The Wolfman.

  At least the movie wouldn’t be bad.

  “Looks great, ladies,” Jeff said, walking out of the back with a bushel of apples.

  “Thanks,” Mandy preened under the praise. “If it had been up to Sadie, there’d be a corpse in the window.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s what zombies are. It doesn’t get more festive than that for Halloween,” I shot daggers at her.

  Mandy and I had known each other since we were little kids. We used to be good friends, until she got pretty and popular, and I got dark and weird. She’d ditched me so hard I had whiplash for years.

  “Normal people would say pumpkins are festive, freakazoid,” she put a hand on a trim hip, her blonde hair flipping over her shoulder.

  “Okay, okay,” Jeff said, pouring the apples in the barrel he’d set up for apple bobbing. “You two better get your costumes on—we open soon.”

  Mandy squealed and ran into the back. I wondered what slutty fairy tale princess she’d be this year. I grabbed my bag and followed her into the back room. Smith’s used to be an old bakery, so the back room was really big. The space came in handy—we filled it with crates and kegs of beer. Mandy had put a full length mirror on the back wall days after she got hired. The girl couldn’t go an hour without having to check herself out in that mirror.

  I didn’t see her, which meant she was probably getting changed in the bathroom. Until she came out, I had to wait my turn to put my costume on, so I sat myself in front of the mirror and got to work on my make up. Pale, lots of dark eyeshadow, black eye liner, and dark purple lips. Next came the fangs that I slipped over my canines. Some blood trickling out of my mouth completed the look. The bathroom door opened with a flourish.

  “Ugh, what are you supposed to be,” Mandy curled her nose at me.

  She was wearing a light blue dress, but calling it a dress would be generous. It was short, very short, and revealing despite the puffy skirt that fanned out at her hip bones like a tutu. She had white thigh-high tights on, silver stilettos, and the capped sleeves did little to distract from the cleavage popping out of the top. So it was Cinderella this year.

  “I’m a vampire,” I said as she twirled in front of the mirror, revealing the ruffled panties she wore underneath.

  “The whole point of Halloween is to wear a costume.”

  I bared my fangs at her and hissed.

  “Jesus, Sadie,” Mandy blanched, like it was the scariest thing she’d ever seen.

  “Let me guess, Blake is going as Prince Charming?”

  “We’re definitely winning the costume contest.”

  “Well, have fun with that,” I scoffed as I got up with my bag to change.

  Unlike Mandy’s, my costume was an actual dress, with a bodice and everything. Black lace, on satin, on black velvet, I looked like a nineteenth century version of Morticia Addams. I even had to tie the stays in the front, making my own bust pop out. I loved Halloween so much, I never skimped on my costumes. This was custom made, ordered online, and way more detailed than the store-bought trash Mandy was wearing.

  She was right, though, she would win the costume contest. No one was going to appreciate my vampire gown. I might as well have torn it to shreds in front of everyone, for all the good it would do to help me win. Not that I cared. I dressed up for myself. I was having fun and that was all that mattered. When I came out, Mandy was still fawning over her reflection.

  I walked up behind her, looking like a ghoul about to suck the life right out of Cinderella. Perfect. My black hair and dark make up stood out against her blonde head and cherry pink lipgloss.

  “You look so creepy,” she said, her blue eyes meeting my brown ones in the mirror.

  “Excellent.”

  3

  Vincent

  The scent got stronger. Trees blurred by me as I ran. The closer I got, the more my cock raged to be inside of my mate. Even shifted, I could feel it was larger. I’d heard from others that the mating heat unlocked a male’s true potential. That his member would nearly double in size and he’d last far longer once he’d met his mate. The orgasms were rumored to be portals to unspeakable bliss.

  I wasn’t sure I believed it, but the way my blood thundered for her, I was starting to think it was all true. My wolf whined as we got closer, ready to claim her and mount her. But first, he had to catch her. Each male had to prove himself worthy of his mate by hunting her down underneath their first mating Moon. It was Nature’s way of showing the female that he alone deserved the right to claim her.

  I felt myself slavering as I imagined chasing my mate under the full Moon. I howled into the sky. I was close. The lights of a town prickled the horizon, and her scent grew stronger. I smelled something that made me pause to sniff the air more carefully. My nose sifted through the scents until it latched onto her delicious one. Human.

  My mate was a human.

  Not that it made any difference. She was my mate, she could have been an old sow and I would have loved her with all my heart, but it was rare for shifters to mate humans. They had to be handled more delicately. I’d have to keep my human form, show her the man before she saw the wolf. At least claiming her would be easy.

  My wolf howled again, happy and impatient to take her. A murder of crows exploded out of the trees at the sound, cawing their annoyance at being disturbed. I howled some more before I set off, running at full speed. I’d be at the town and claiming my mate soon. The heat propelled me, making me me faster than I usually was, and that was saying something. The animals of the forest gave way to me, an Alpha on his way to breed his female.

  Nothing in the world could get between us.

  4

  Sadie

  I ignored Mandy’s squeal as Blake walked into the bar. His Prince Charming costume was as predictable as hers: blue pants, white ruffled shirt, matching jacket with gold lapels. All cheap, store-bought trash.

  “Can someone get another case of the Pumpkin Ale?” Jeff asked from behind the bar, now dressed as a Scarecrow.

  I looked at Mandy, wrapped up in Blake’s arms, and rolled my eyes. What did it matter that aside from handing me window decorations, she’d hardly lifted a manicured finger to help get this place ready?

  “Got it,” I said, stalking into the back.

  I eyed the orange box of Pumpkin Ale, groaning as I picked it up. I turned and almost walked rig
ht into Prince Charming himself, jumping back with a little yelp. I hadn’t heard him come in, and he startled me. Blake’s sandy brown hair and quick grin moved towards me. I clung to the box for dear life as he advanced until I was backed up against the mirror.

  “You look really good tonight, Sadie,” he said, acting like this was totally normal behavior.

  Blake had never looked twice at me before. What was going on? I didn’t know what to say, so I cleared my throat and looked awkwardly to the side, waiting for him to get out of my way. Instead, he put a hand on the box, pressing it down until he could see the tops of my breasts heaving in my bodice.

  “That corset is sexy.”

  The look on his face was freaking me out.

  “I’ll be sure to tell Mandy where to get one.”

  “Nah, she’d never wear something like that,” he pressed his body against the box, making the glass bottles clink. “She’s too vanilla.”

  Blake’s fingers traced over my forearms until they gripped the box. He was so close his hands grazed against the top of my cleavage and his face was inches away.

  “I bet you’re a freak in the sack,” he winked before he took the case from of my hands and walked out the door.

  Um, excuse me? My heart beat rapidly for a few moments while I stared, dumbfounded, after him. I shook my arms, like I could get the Blake-residue off, and stepped out the back door. I needed some fresh air. I leaned against the back of the building as my mind whirled. I watched a black cat walk across a fence post as the sun began to set. What the hell was that? Did Mandy’s finance just hit on me in the creepiest way possible?